My fingers shook so hard I dropped the bracelet once.
When I came back, Dale leaned close and muttered, “You’re making a mistake.”
I walked past him without answering.
At Nadine’s, the first night I didn’t sleep. The bed was too soft.
The quiet was too quiet.
I kept waiting for footsteps to stop outside my door.
In the morning, Nadine didn’t ask me to act normal. She just set cereal on the table and said, “Eat if you can.”
Corbin sat down across from me.
“You can lock your door,” he said, pointing to the knob. “If it helps.”
I stared.
“You’re… okay with that?”
He nodded.
“Whatever makes you feel safe.”
Days blurred into questions and paperwork. A counselor asked me what I liked. I didn’t know how to answer at first.
Nobody had asked me that in a long time.
A social worker explained court stuff like I was supposed to understand it.
I nodded anyway.
All I cared about was that I woke up feeling safe.
Two weeks later, an envelope showed up.
Nadine held it at the counter, face tight. “It’s from Dale’s lawyer.”
My stomach dropped.
Corbin read it and swore.
Then Nadine handed it to me.
That was all it said.
My hands went cold.
“What does that mean?” I whispered.
Nadine looked at the floor. Corbin looked away.
Nadine said, “Your mom was afraid of Dale.”
“So was I,” I snapped.
Nadine’s eyes lifted to mine.
“Not like this,” she said.
“She told me things before she died. She begged me to watch Dale.”
Corbin stood. “We’re going to the cemetery.”
“Now?” I asked.
“Now,” Nadine said.
We drove there in silence.
The oak tree stood over my mom’s grave like a guard.
Nadine crouched and pulled an old envelope from her coat pocket.
Yellowed. Soft at the edges.
My mom’s handwriting on the front.
Wyatt.
My throat closed.
Nadine held it out. “Your mom made me promise I wouldn’t give you this until you were old enough.”
“How would she know when?” I asked.
Nadine’s voice shook.
“She said I’d know.
Because Dale would be scared.”
I took it. My hands trembled as I opened it.
Inside was one line, underlined twice.
“If Dale ever comes back scared, it means you’re finally old enough to know the truth.”
My mouth went dry.
I looked up at Nadine. “What truth?”
Nadine stared at the headstone and started crying.
Corbin’s fists clenched so tight his knuckles went white.
And I understood why Dale’s face had changed when he saw her.
My mom’s story didn’t end the way I’d been told.
Dale wasn’t scared because he was being inconvenienced.
He was scared because he knew what the truth could do.
I stood under that oak tree with my mom’s letter in my hand, and I realized the scariest part wasn’t Dale coming after me.
It was that my mom had been trying to warn me from the grave.
I didn’t ask more right then.
I couldn’t. I folded the note and held it to my chest.
I was safe from Dale, and he knew exactly why.
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